


Just Keep Swimming

by iaminarage



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Theatre, Youth Theatre, stage management
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-18 22:35:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1445344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaminarage/pseuds/iaminarage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blaine Anderson just wants to be the best stage manager he can possibly be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Keep Swimming

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is completely AU. The title is, of course, a reference to Finding Nemo, but it’s also something my friends say to each other during Tech Week when we get to the point where we’re running on fumes. Thanks to Januarium for the beta.
> 
> Written for the Glee Write What You Know Fest because, once upon a time, I was a stage manager in a theatre like this one.

Blaine got to the theatre at 3:30pm the day of the first dress rehearsal for Les Miserables. He was the first one there, of course, because he was two hours early. His mother had complained when she dropped him off, telling him that it was his junior year and that he needed to focus on school, not spend every waking minute at the theatre. Blaine had reminded her that tech week was only one week and that he was the stage manager. He needed to be there.

He unlocked the door with his set of keys and punched in the security code. He’d finally talked his way into his set of keys a year ago and he was still thrilled that he could come and go into the theatre without bothering anyone in the office.

As he walked into the building he started turning on lights, so that when the cast arrived they wouldn’t be walking around in the dark. He settled himself on the floor in front of the stage and started pulling things out of his stage manager kit. First he opened his script in front of him and then grabbed his pencils, highlighters, and pens.

He started on the first page of his script and began working through it from the beginning. He checked all of his cues to make sure that they were correct and that they matched the cue sheets. Then he wrote in stand-bys for each cue so that he could make sure the operators were paying attention when the cues came up. Tomorrow, before final dress, he would mark over each cue in pen and highlight it with a different color depending on who he would be cueing. Les Mis had hundreds of cues between lights, set changes, sound, and flying set pieces in and out. It was easily the most complicated show he’d ever done.

Blaine had actually objected to doing Les Mis for exactly that reason over the summer when Will had suggested that the teen group at the Lima Youth Theatre do the show as it’s spring production. Blaine had reminded him that it was too long, too expensive, too complicated, and too vocally challenging. Never mind the fact that they really didn’t have strong enough guys to do it. At the time they hadn’t had a single strong Baritone!

But, like anything Will got into his head, there had been no arguing with him so all Blaine could do was his best. The show had been eating his life for the last few months, especially this last week and a half. He’d spent pretty much all of his free time making lists. With a show this complicated, the only way they had a shot of it working was to make lists. On the upside, he knew that stage managing a show as complex as Les Mis would look fantastic on his resume when he applied to college next year.

Apparently everyone wanted to do Les Mis, because they’d easily had their biggest turnout ever at auditions, but most of the leads were still being played by people who’d been at LYT for years. It was possible that Rachel Berry, who was playing Fantine, had been born in the lobby of the theatre. She was the only person who’d been there longer than Blaine. And Blaine had known Marley, who was playing Cosette, since she was eight years old. Their Javert was new for this show, though. Hunter Clarington had easily won the role by being an actual baritone, which mostly meant that they were all stuck dealing with him.

He had to admit that, Hunter’s personality aside, the show was actually going better than he had expected. The cast had really risen to the task. If Blaine had to guess, he would say that it was because they all loved the show and wanted to prove they could do it. If nothing else, it was worth doing because of how amazing Elliott was as Jean Valjean. Elliott was a senior and was going to NYU for theatre, so Blaine was glad that they’d been able to give him the chance to do a part like this before he graduated.

Blaine liked the time he got to spend alone in the theatre. LYT had been his home for almost half his life and being able to sit quietly in his theatre doing his work was incredibly grounding. He loved the cast, who he considered to be his family, and there was no group of people he’d rather be around, but they tended to be distracting as well as energizing.

The first person to arrive after Blaine was his deck captain, Lauren Zizes. She walked down the aisle towards him, dressed in all black as usual, and looking she might kill anyone who got in her way. “Hey Lauren!” He said brightly. “Glad you’re here. Can you start your--”

“If you say the words ‘preshow checklist,’ I will kill you and hide your body in the flies,” she replied in a bored tone. “This is our sixth show together; I know the drill.”

Technically they’d done more than six shows together, since both of them generally did tech for every show LYT did (unless it was impossible to do two at once), which meant they’d worked about ten shows a year (in some capacity) for the last three years. But he knew what she meant. This was the sixth show that Blaine was stage managing with Lauren as deck captain. And yes, she probably did know that as soon as anyone got to a dress rehearsal they were supposed to start their preshow checklist.

Not long after that, the cast and the rest of the crew started arriving. Most of the cast said hi to him or stopped to give him a hug as they headed through the theatre to get to the dressing rooms. Blaine stayed where he was because he still had a few pages of script to get through before he was finished.

Blaine was working through an especially difficult sequence of cues trying to figure out how best to call them when someone cleared their throat in front of him. He jumped a little and then looked up to see Kurt staring at him with his arms crossed, a look of obvious amusement on his face. “How long have you been here?” Kurt asked.

“Since 3:30,” Blaine answered as he stood up and stretched. He’d been sitting hunched over his script for two hours and he could definitely feel it.

Kurt just rolled his eyes. Even after only two years at LYT (and a year of being Blaine’s boyfriend), Kurt knew better than to even bother scolding Blaine for spending so much time at the theatre. “And while you were sitting alone in the theatre for two hours trying to become one with the prompt book, did you happen to check your text messages at all?”

Blaine smiled and ducked his head. He actually hadn’t looked at his phone since he’d gotten there. When he pulled his phone out of his pocket, he saw that he had five text messages from Kurt and one from the sound operator, Matt Rutherford. Matt’s text said that he was running a bit late and asked Blaine to remind the cast that all the principles needed to be in costume before they could get their mics. The texts from Kurt were all about whether Blaine wanted him to pick up food. “Oh man, and I really am hungry,” Blaine said. He tended to forget that he would need to eat between 3:30pm and 10pm.

“I know,” Kurt said with a sigh, then he picked up a brown paper bag and set it in Blaine’s arms.

Blaine peered into the bag and found his usual order from Panera Bread. “What would I do without you?” Blaine asked, and then leaned in to kiss Kurt quickly, taking care not to crush his dinner.

“Starve, probably,” Kurt responded when he pulled away. “I have to go get dressed. Chain gang is the new look for fall. You’ll have to try to contain your overwhelming passion the next time you see me.”

“Impossible,” Blaine replied with a grin. Kurt would have made a paper bag look hot, but it was true that he was definitely more distracting in his Marius costume than in the rags and dirt he wore for the opening of the show. “Don’t forget to--”

Kurt rolled his eyes but he gave Blaine a fond smile. “Start my checklist. I know.”

Once Kurt headed down stairs, Blaine turned back up to the stage. “Lauren?” He shouted. She came out onto the stage swinging the wrench that was tied to her belt loop by a rope. “If you hit someone in the head with that, I will not be the one filling out the paperwork.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at him. “Even if it’s Clarington?”

“Once the show closes, I can’t stop you,” Blaine replied with a smile. “Can you go tell the cast that Matt says the principles need to get in costume quickly so they can get their mics?”

“Whatever you say, boss.” Lauren saluted slightly sarcastically and then headed back stage. Once she was gone, Blaine pulled out his own checklist and got started.

At seven o’clock, the tech crew was ready to start the run but Will had called Kurt and Marley up to fix something in the in "A Heart Full of Love" and he hadn’t finished yet. Blaine was working on resisting the urge to tell him that he didn’t care what happened in the scene as long as they got to do a full tech run. “Why don’t you go up to the booth and get set, Blaine. We’re almost done.”

Blaine obliged and headed up the stairs, trying to get his head in the mindset of calling the show instead of thinking about killing their director for any longer. As soon as he walked into the booth, Artie turned away from the light board to face him and said, “I swear to God, if he stops this run, I will tie him up and shove him in a closet.”

“There’s no way Lauren won’t get to him first,” Blaine said, dropping into his chair with a sigh and getting on headset. The night before, Will had started the rehearsal by saying that they were doing a full run through without stopping. And then he’d stopped to give acting notes every couple of minutes. By the end of the night, the tech crew had been very close to revolting and Blaine had spent a significant amount of time working up a speech about how he, as the stage manager, needed the chance to rehearse, too. He couldn't do his best work once the show opened if the director was prioritizing stopping to fix blocking over allowing his crew to practice. He hadn’t actually given the speech yet, but it could still happen.

Blaine reached down and pulled his script out of his backpack and opened it to the first page, then he got his notebook and a pencil out so that he could make a work list and take any acting notes he had. He set his timer next to his script so he could time the run, and finally he pulled out his water bottle.

Will had finally cleared the stage and he shouted up to Blaine that he was ready to go. Blaine looked down at the stage with the curtain closed across it and took a deep breath, allowing himself to calm down and get in the zone for what he needed to do. “Lights, are you ready?” he said.

“Ready and waiting,” Artie replied.

“Sound, are you ready?”

“Ready to go, man,” Matt said.

“Ready to go on deck?”

“I’m always ready, Anderson. And the actors are in places.”

Blaine breathed one more time. “Okay, here we go. Stand-by lights two through four, stand-by curtain.”

“Standing by,” Lauren and Artie said in unison. His whole crew liked to have fun on headset, but they knew that, as soon as Blaine said to stand-by, they had to be all business.

“And… light two go.” The house lights came down to half and a warm light came up on the curtain. When they actually performed the show, this would be the light for the preshow speech. Since they were only rehearsing, Blaine kept moving. “Light three go.” This brought the house and the stage to blackout and that was the cue for Brad and the orchestra to start playing. As soon as the music started, Blaine said, “Curtain go” and Lauren slowly pulled the curtain open. He waited a few seconds for the music to change and then gave his final cue of the opening. “Light four go.” This brought the lights up on the chain gang on stage.

When they started singing, Blaine exhaled a bit. The show was officially going and he knew that he was in his element. There was nothing he loved more than the moments when he was in the dark booth with his script in front of him, his headset on, and the show in progress on stage. No matter what went wrong--and it would--he knew that the show was completely under his control. Whatever happened, he would handle it. It was these moments when he knew that he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone interested, here is the full cast list:   
> Jean Valjean- Elliott Gilbert  
> Javert- Hunter Clarington  
> Fantine- Rachel Berry  
> Eponine- Kitty Wilde  
> Cosette- Marley Rose  
> Marius- Kurt Hummel  
> Enjolras- Jake Puckerman  
> Grantaire- Ryder Lynn  
> Thenardier- Noah Puckerman  
> Mme. Thenardier- Santana Lopez  
> Bishop- Finn Hudson  
> Other Featured Roles/Ensemble- Unique Adams, Sam Evans, Mercedes Jones, Rory O’Malley, Quinn Fabray, Tina Cohen-Chang, Joe Hart, Brittany Pierce, Mike Chang, Sugar Motta (And probably plenty of other people who aren’t glee characters.)


End file.
